Spotkanie VI

Czas

7 października 2016 r., godz. 13.30

Program

Tim Geelhaar

A Carolingian christianitas? Semasiological Observations on „christianitas” in the 8th and 9th centuries

Streszczenie

What happens if we reconsider the word use of christianitas in Carolingian times without presuming in advance that it became a generally accepted concept of Christendom. What can we learn about a society by studying the semantic structures of its remaining textual witnesses? These questions are in the center of a recently published PhD dissertation that retraces in a semasiological approach the word use of this term that shaped our understanding of the Middle Ages for so long. It is surprising that the only monograph about christianitas before was presented by Jean Rupp in 1939. Since then, Medievalists build upon Rupp’s thesis that the concept came up in Carolingian times and grew so important that for the time of Innocent III it seems justified to call the medieval Christian society christianitas despite the well-known polysemy of that term. This paper now will provide an insight into different situations of word use for the 8th and 9th century in order to show that at least for the time of Charlemagne attempts of imposing such a concept had to fail.